Thursday, January 20, 2011

Review: Shany Fauxnad Plates

Edit (4/11): Please note this review was written in January 2011 when the price was $15. As of April, it looks like the price on Amazon has gone up significantly (~$38) and it may continue to fluctuate.

I'm always on the lookout for a good deal on fauxnad plates to add to my collection, and I saw a new "brand" pop up on Amazon in December called Shany. The Shany plates looked similar to the Bundle Monster plates but they were selling for a little cheaper ($15 vs. $18) and came with four more plates (25 plates vs. 21 plates). I was curious so I went ahead and ordered them, since I wouldn't mind having dupes of some Bundle Monster plates that I've lost.

As I suspected, 21 of the 25 plates are identical to the Bundle Monster set, numbered B1 through B21. Here are pics of the 4 "extra" plates:

As far as I can tell the metal is the same quality as the Bundle Monster plates, though one of my plates wasn't cut properly and looked like the machine had taken a bite out of it:

If you already have the Bundle Monster set then the Shany plates are duplicative, but if you were thinking of buying Bundle Monster I'd recommend these. 60 cents a plate is a pretty tough deal to beat, especially considering original Konad plates sell for ~10x that at $7 a plate. Though I don't think the Bundle Monster / Shany plates work quite as well as Konad, the majority of images do work and the quality is fairly close.

As always with fauxnad plates, remember to remove the thin layer of plastic on top and be careful of the sharp edges. I've accidentally cut myself on the edge of a fauxnad plate before, which I didn't believe was possible until it actually happened to me.

Hope that's helpful! Feel free to let me know if you have any questions.